One of the greatest challenges faced by information technology (IT) professionals and computer users today, particularly in the business environment is the protection and management of data. Data may be stored on user workstations, e.g., laptop computers, home or office desktop computers, network servers or other devices external to the workstations. Important data may even be stored on hand-held computing devices such as PDAs, PALs and other like devices. Complicating the problem is the fact that the criticality of data is increasing and the difficulty of managing it, protecting it from loss and keeping it available is increasing. This is due to a variety of factors, including: 1) the explosion in data volume, particularly that stored on desktop and laptop computers, 2) the increasing complexity of desktop and laptop computer software and hardware and increasing trends toward a paperless environment were absolute reliance (because paper copies are becoming less the norm) on data integrity is increasingly significant.
Many home computer users do not realize the vulnerability of their computer data. Many that do understand the very real potential for data loss, purchase backup systems whose operation and user interface is often confusing and/or time-consuming to use, dramatically decreasing their effectiveness or dependability. As a result, many computer users remain very much at risk of data loss resulting from hardware and/or software failures, fires, stolen equipment, etc. While these risks are significant, the most frequent cause of data loss is user error (accidental file deletes, file overwrites, errant programs, etc.), to which users remain very vulnerable even with most present day backup systems.
The financial impact of information loss is substantial. As reported by the Safeware Insurance Agency, in 1999 alone, insurance claims for damaged, lost and stolen computers (primarily notebook computers) totaled more than $1.9 billion. This figure does not include the untold billions lost in intellectual capital and time. It is costly to recreate lost data and there are significant related costs such as lost productivity and lost opportunity. Consider, for example, the financial and health related impact of a doctor losing all patient contact information and medical histories due to a hard disk crash or some other type of computer failure. In addition, it is costly to keep desktop and laptop computers up and running in the wake of their increasing complexity.
A variety of products have been developed to address data preservation and integrity issues. These products may be loosely grouped into three categories, manual backup systems, schedule based backup systems and mirroring backup systems.
The least efficient and probably one of the most frequently used backup systems is the manual backup. At times determined by the user, the user selects files to be backed up and either utilizes the built in backup procedure for the corresponding application or manually copies the selected files to a desired backup storage media.
The problems with this method of preserving data are self-evident. Backup procedures are often confusing and may differ from application to application. Accordingly, the user must familiarize itself with the various methods for performing backups. In addition, users may forget to backup or elect not to on a given occasion due to time constraints or other reasons. Manual backups often do not allow the user to continue to use the system during the backup procedure. Furthermore, data stored to the backup media is really only a “snapshot” of the data at the time that the backup is performed. Any changes made between manual backups would be lost if there was a failure on the computer's storage device.
Schedule based backup systems typically perform backups according to a schedule either set by the user or preset by the backup software. One of the major disadvantages of each type of schedule-based backup system is that as with manual backups, they miss work done between schedule points. This may cause the user to loose critical information as they work between schedule points. Another disadvantage of schedule-based backups systems is that they are frequently confusing and cumbersome for the user. Still another disadvantage of schedule-based backup systems is that they function poorly if at all when the backup storage device is unavailable, i.e., they cannot be written to due to a communications error or because the device has reached its capacity, is bandwidth limited, or is non-operational for some other reason.
Mirroring is a technique typically applied to disk based backup systems. Mirroring backup systems are the most comprehensive in that everything that happens to the source storage device immediately happens to the backup storage device. That is the backup drive becomes a mirror image of the source drive. Accordingly, if a failure occurs on the source disk, processing can be switched to the backup disk with little or no service interruption.
The strongest advantage of mirroring systems is also their strongest disadvantage. Because there is no operational discrimination, if a file is accidentally deleted from the source disk, it is deleted and cannot be preserved on the backup disk. Likewise, if a virus infects the source disk it is likely to infect the backup disk. Another disadvantage of mirroring systems is that separate backup disks are required for each source disk, doubling the disk requirement for the system. The backup disk must be at least as large as the source disk and the disks must be configured with identical volume mapping. Any extra space that may be present on the backup disk is unavailable.
All of these methods require that the user specify which files/directories to back up, but many users have no concept of files and directories in their thought process, much less are they able to correlate a particular application (e.g. Microsoft Excel) with the kinds and locations of files they generate. These systems simply require too much user knowledge, and too much user intervention. The backup user's risk increases dramatically the lower his computer knowledge may be.
In view of the foregoing, there is a need for a file capture, preservation and management system that captures files just before and/or just after they have been changed to minimize loss of data between backup events. There is also a need for file capture and preservation system that captures files even when the destination storage medium for the files is unavailable. There is a further need for a system that allows users to recover easily and quickly from any type of information loss, including simple user errors, failed software installations or updates, hardware failures (attached storage devices), and lost or stolen laptop computers. Users should be able to recover on their own, without the intervention of the IT staff, and their backup systems should be as “behind the scenes” as possible, requiring little user attention and extremely small amounts of user computer knowledge.